Tracy Martin's treasure hunt at a German Village estate sale about 10 years ago mined an intriguing photo of an old baseball team. Its identity would have been lost to time were it not for the word Buckeye across the players' chests.

Bob Hunter, The Columbus Dispatch

Tracy Martin’s treasure hunt at a German Village estate sale about 10 years ago mined an intriguing photo of an old baseball team. Its identity would have been lost to time were it not for the word Buckeye across the players’ chests.

But by itself, that was merely an invitation to try to solve the mystery.

“Immediately I started asking for background information, and they didn’t have anything,” Martin said. “They said it had been in the house for so many years.”

Martin knew enough, however, to know that he wanted it. The 49-year-old Grove City resident owns a remarkable collection of historic baseball items — material that has been on display at various places across the state and the nation, including Huntington Park, Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It was that collection that brought me to his home, hoping to borrow a few items for the Columbus Historical Society bicentennial exhibit at COSI, which will open at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. One of those items is a suitcase-sized copy of that photograph that hung in Martin’s basement.

“I thought the team might be from Cincinnati,” Martin said. “I was aware of a Buckeye team they had there in the 1860s. I also knew a little about the Columbus Buckeyes. I started doing research and finally asked SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research) for help. They compared the photo with photos of other early teams and identified a few of the players.”

It turns out this is the only known photograph of the 1876 Columbus Buckeyes, the city’s first professional team. A long-winded researcher might be able to fill a one-page pamphlet with all we know about it.

“I don’t know the name of the family that had (the photograph),” Martin said. “I wish I did. I don’t even remember the house where I got it. I know it was close to Livingston Avenue.”

On the day the city is having its official 200th birthday celebration — 200Columbus has its “ Celebration of the Centuries” beginning at 6 tonight at the convention center — it’s good to remind ourselves that a lot of who and what we are has been forgotten. People who had a lot to do with shaping our lives are asleep in our cemeteries, their stories and their achievements having gone with them to the grave.

The knowledge that does survive is often because of people like Martin, whose love for baseball and for history has allowed us to share in things that might have been lost otherwise.

“This particular broadside hung down at the Neil House on High Street,” Martin said as he pointed at a poster on his basement wall. “It’s promoting a game in Dayton on Thursday, Oct.?25, 1927. They played here in Columbus at Neil Park the previous day.”

“They” were the New York Yankees, the team considered the greatest of all by many historians. The poster includes photos of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who looked young enough to be a newsboy.

“I guess the day they played here was real cold and windy,” Martin said, “and just a few hundred people came out and watched. Reserve seats were on sale at the Neil House cigar stand.”

The Neil House is gone without a trace from the High Street location it occupied for 142 years. It still lives in photographs of two of the three buildings that bore original proprietor William Neil’s name, photos as identifiable as the ones that will be snapped at tonight’s big party.

But beyond Ed “The Only” Nolan, manager Jimmy Williams, Billy Barnie, George Strief, Joe Simmons and Chub Sullivan, the Buckeyes in Martin’s photo could be anybody. Somebody holding this newspaper might be reading about their grandfather.

“I turned it over to see if there was any writing on it,” Martin said. “They had attached another photograph of an older man and an older woman in Victorian-period clothing. It’s stuck on there good, and I’m afraid to try to take it off.”

Martin showed me the photo, and it instantly hit me that the man in the suit might have been a member of the team. There were two strong possibilities, one of whom we agreed was probably him.

“Look at his nose,” Martin said. “And the jaw … wow. That’s amazing.”

So is this: The man in the photographs might have lived in the house where Martin found it. He could have been a player who either grew up in Columbus or stayed here after his playing career was over, someone once familiar on the Columbus streets whom no one knows now.

Here’s wishing him and all of the city’s now-forgotten citizens a happy 200th birthday.

Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch.

bhunter@dispatch.com

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